ICEBlock Removed From the App Store

Carefully sidestepping the issue of whether this app is legal/ethical/whatever, I still have to wonder why it's not just a website.

So many things that just do one thing should just be a website for so many reasons. Did the creator of this not want a website, did it not occur to them, I just wonder why.

@bart Usually the answer to your question is "because it was an iOS developer who did it, and they might not know how to code a webpage". The bigger question is, why can't people freely download and install this app on a device they own from a website? A device they quote unquote "own".

Considering how comfortable Tim Cook is with sucking up to Trump, I wonder what other apps the administration will pressure Apple to kill?

When Apple announced that the App Store would be the only way to install apps on your phone, I thought that was a bad idea. It's been almost two decades since then and I've only become more certain I was right.

Here’s an interesting article about the app from before it was banned.
https://www.metafilter.com/210189/Unfortunately-the-ICEBlock-app-is-activism-theater

@bart, @Leo...

iOS developer here, one with *just* enough web programming experience to be dangerous. Maybe I'm answering my own question, but maybe either of you can help me understand...

Isn't there at least *some* advantages (location tracking, cellular availability) that may come from something that isn't this web app? I'm also trying to sidestep politics, both governmental and corporate. This "website" you both are referring to.... who pays for maintenance or upkeep? Why should I trust *it*?

Please, let's be constructive. I think I - despite being an iOS developer - am actually on the same side as you both. But speaking technically, how would this "website' work?

Who pays for your iOS server storage? I'm not sure Apple has enough free oer-app iCloud storage to build something like this app. So you still pay for some cloud storage. At which point, if you have storage and some basic knowledge, hosting the HTML becomes trivial. You can request location with modern web browsers. You can use mapping solutions to display a map on the web. I dont see s technical barrier here to gatekeep as an app.

But still, it should be possible to just install the app from anywhere.

Interesting cognitive dissonance to see the same people upset this was pulled previously telling anyone that supported the EU sideloading being brought to the States "if you don't like it, leave the platform." Irony at its finest.

@Leo, good point. As I said, I know just enough HTML (is it still HTML5? CSS? I can read JavaScript) to be dangerous. :-) That last sentence seems a bit biased against App Store and wanting side-loading. Not that I'm disagreeing with you, just noting it.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

@Dave & @Léo

Good points. Strange of me to just assume the same person would have an equal skillset in web development.

I checked out the website a bit and it does seem that the answer is that the person chose iOS due to perceived privacy improvements, especially push notifications.

I suppose I assumed someone with the capability to create this iOS app, and who apparently could but has chosen not to also make it on Android, could also have found a way to implement it for the web.

Push notifications seems to be the major issue, and I don't know how those work for web pages but I'm assuming it has the same problem as Android of them having to store a UUID. But as Léo pointed out, someone has to store it.

I suppose they chose to take the risk of trusting Apple to keep the data safe while also taking the risk that their single point of distribution could go away.

So I suppose the other answer to my question is that the alternative starts to go down the hosting whack-a-mole rabbit hole. I suppose it's better for the dev to have Apple simply take the app down than have the feds kick in the door and start seizing servers.

Website hosting can also be shut down and then the data itself is more at risk, so I understand why they did this particular thing this way.

In the end an app store is just another hosted service.

@bart, great reply.

Speaking personally, my experience starts with Assembler, Apple II, and goes through COBOL 74, Visual Basic, C#, and ABAP. Never liked Obj-C and still work in Swift. And again, just enough web coding to be dangerous.

I get your point about push notifications. No clue how to do it on an iOS device through the web, but maybe that's why this was an iOS app Apple shut down. For me, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, like Swift, is a language. Push notifications, web sites, even web apps, are not. And yes, some are open while some are not. I appreciate you (and @Leo) teaching me something about the state of native(?) web programming.

Now if @Leo can teach me one more thing - that tilde (accent?) - over your "e".... how can I properly do that? (Writing on an m2 MBP.)

The Trump Regime could have pressured Apple to remove this app. That alone shows why sideloading is so important. Apple should not have the ability to censor applications like this. Users should have the right to install apps like this.

Even if the president doesn’t want them to

@bart

> Carefully sidestepping the issue of whether this app is legal/ethical/whatever, I still have to wonder why it's not just a website.

Once we buy a device, it is ours, so we should be free to choose what to run on it. Also, diverting to the web isn't going to solve anything long-term. Google has attempted to push web attestation before [1]. Once society accepts that it's ok that we don't control the apps on our devices (which Google is trying to do with Android as well now), the web is going to be the next platform that is going to be made slowly unfree. So, the battle for control over our devices should be fought at the freedom to choose to install apps already.

More practically, a website has a lot of downsides. An app has much better integration with location tracking, location-based warnings (since they have facilities to run in the background), etc.

[1] https://forums.puri.sm/t/the-end-of-freedom-or-personal-choice-in-computing/20915

@Dave If you have press and hold enabled, you can long press on "e" to get a menu where you can select the letter variant "é", or you can press option+e and then press e to get "é".

https://superuser.com/questions/1745263/how-do-i-type-accented-characters-like-%C3%BC-and-%C3%B6-in-macos

I use the long press menu because I never remember all the alt/option variants.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252800535?sortBy=rank

@Daniel.... my only problem with your comment is the unspoken assumptions you've made.

When you last purchased music (maybe in the form of a CD), what "ownership" did you receive? Copyright laws are very clear - they stop at both "reproduction" and "reuse for profit" IANAL but that means you actually are liable to pay... some corporate entity... if you are a DJ at a wedding or dance.

Sticking with music, let's talk streaming. (I don't stream music, so again, IANAL.) Does your "ownership" of this device give you the right to purchase something like AudioHijack and record - for play offline - of what playlist you just streamed?

I get (and agree) with your point about Google. They are an ad-driven entity who maybe should be broken up. Same with Apple, Amazon, Meta, etc. Just don't say purchasing a device give you complete freedom to do whatever you want without consequence.

@Léo, I only saw your comment after when I posted mine to @Daniël. Thanks! It's not yet daylight and I already learned my "something new" today.

"why it's not just a website"

According to the creator of the app, it's so he can send notifications to people without knowing anything about them. I think you could do the same with a PWA, though.

Either way, the issue here is very clearly that the platform owner should not be able to control which apps users are allowed to run.

BTW, everyone decrying free speech, I wonder what their sentiment was when Apple and social media was removing COVID and vaccine-related apps and posts as “misinformation” at the “request” of the Biden admin.? Or stories about a certain nepo baby’s laptop? They are all corrupt, they all abuse their power and there is always partisan hypocrisy. The US has a constitutional amendment to allow free speech, but nobody is willing to fight for it. Certainly not a company whose CEO can directly “donate” bribes to the reigning president. Well, the US calls this “speech” also, so 🤷‍♂️

Again not counting the political issue of this specific app itself, this post from the developer of NetNewsWire says it pretty well.

https://inessential.com/2025/10/04/why-netnewswire-is-not-web-app.html

A real life example that makes some of the points we have discussed here.

> BTW, everyone decrying free speech, I wonder what their sentiment was when Apple and social media was removing COVID and vaccine-related apps and posts as “misinformation” at the “request” of the Biden admin.? Or stories about a certain nepo baby’s laptop? They are all corrupt, they all abuse their power and there is always partisan hypocrisy. The US has a constitutional amendment to allow free speech, but nobody is willing to fight for it.

Yes but those requests weren’t made by “cheeto man.” Free speech for me not for thee.

The speech issue here is pretty much all on Apple. It’s expected that they would take the app down given the circumstances but not allowing sideloading is what effectively kills it. They don’t want to be perceived as endorsing the app.

Also the entire Apple=privacy thing is bs. Apple has shown it will usually comply with government demands. So sure the developer doesn’t have the customer info and therefore the developer can’t comply with a court order to hand over information he doesn’t have but they’d just ask Apple for it. And what makes you think Apple would use its resources to legally fight this? ICE officers just got killed it would be a PR nightmare and they are a public company. Half the country disagrees with ya’ll but they still buy iPhones

well not secret back channels censoring people at least. Now we know what is happening and not some backdoor pressure that happened in the past....

I don't have a problem with the Trump administration advocating for removing this app (although the manner in which it happened may be questionable), same as I had no problem with the Biden administrator advocating for removal of health misinformation during a pandemic. Protecting the public health and protecting their employees is part of the job of a government. This is not the same as the FCC threatening the media because a host made a joke about Trump.

I also don't have a problem with Apple removing this app. In fact, Apple is far too lenient in what they let into the app store. 99% of the shit in that store should never have made it in.

I do, however, think that this app is completely legal and should be able to exist, just like lying to people about covid is completely legal and should be able to exist.

The problem is, and has always been, that there is no alternative delivery mechanism. Apple needs to enable people to install whatever apps they want on their own devices.

I wouldn’t say demanding the removal of mentions that the virus originated from a lab in China is “protecting the public health”; it’s political virtue signaling of the lowest kind. And demanding HB laptop be removed as “Russian propaganda”; is that also public health? They all abuse their power. That’s not “advocation”, and in a proper world, companies would take the government to task in a court of law. But banning “Chinese virus” and “laptop” were politically convenient for the social media companies, and complying with current admin silly demands is convenient for Apple.

@Objc4life According to NPR, the Dallas gunman, Joshua Jahn, was trying to target ICE personnel but instead shot three detainees. So I don’t think any ICE officers were killed, unless you’re referring to a different attack. Doesn’t really change the situation wrt Apple, though.

@Anonymous Yes, we continue to see that pretty much all the big tech platforms were under secret government pressure to censor legal speech (across the last several administrations). It’s good that this is more in the open, although that doesn’t mean that there isn’t still censorship going on that’s hidden from us.

@Plume I mostly agree with you, but can the government ever really advocate for something without there being an implied threat? Did Apple remove it because of that or because they decided of their own prerogative that it was a bad look? If the former, it wasn’t really their decision. If the latter, it points to a problem with the guidelines and review because this situation was totally foreseeable; either they should have never approved it or they shouldn’t have changed the rules after the fact. (Of course, per normal, the written rules didn’t change.)

@Léo The whole idea of misinformation in an area where there’s a lot of uncertainty and evolving understanding doesn’t make sense. To take one less political example, the WHO was claiming for the first few years that COVID-19 wasn’t airborne, so using them as an official source would mean that the truth was misinformation.

I didn't expect to reply to this post anymore, because I don't want to get political. But @Bart, that link really struck home. (I really only care about the current state of web apps or websites.)

Not only was that post dated yesterday, it detailed things I'm in complete agreement with. One thing Brent mentioned was something I never considered before:

> What I want to see happen is for Apple to allow iPhone and iPad users to load — not sideload, a term I detest, because it assumes Apple’s side of things — whatever apps they want to. Because those devices are computers.

I've used (maybe even in this post's comments) the word "sideload" because that was to me always a more polite (politically correct?) way of saying "jailbreak". I need to trike that word from my vocabulary!

Leo: Social media companies restricted discussion of HB's laptop in October 2020. Trump was president at the time, not Biden. Maybe delete this from the talking points?

> @Objc4life According to NPR, the Dallas gunman, Joshua Jahn, was trying to target ICE personnel but instead shot three detainees. So I don’t think any ICE officers were killed, unless you’re referring to a different attack. Doesn’t really change the situation wrt Apple, though

My mistake it was originally reported that two ice officers were critically injured, apparently only detainees were killed. doesn’t matter nobody should’ve been killed so Apple wanting to distance itself from these kind of apps makes sense.

Like I said the speech concern here is still really all on Apple. Gruber is just ranting. Politics aside Apple rejects apps for all sorts of reasons…if you’re too creative and make an app that is too useful they might reject you because they want to reserve those features for themselves.
Apple has taken the position that these computers aren’t really ours and we just rent them. If you believe otherwise the push for being able to install the software you want on your purchased devices should be aimed at the appropriate target.

> Leo: Social media companies restricted discussion of HB's laptop in October 2020. Trump was president at the time, not Biden. Maybe delete this from the talking points?

@Visiting I don’t really understand your argument. There was an enormous effort to cover up the HB laptop story by big tech and juiced in bureaucrats (informally referred to as the Deep State) in order to influence the 2020 election. Are free speech concerns not valid unless the presidential administration is involved in some way? Twitter even suspended the NYP account for publishing an accurate story. So sure the Trump administration at the time didn’t want to censor that information but other powerful forces did. Polling has indicated Trump would have likely won the 2020 election if the story hadn’t been suppressed. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gruber was happy about that kind of censorship.

If social media is not the “public square” than neither is Apple’s App Store.

Objc4life: In my reading, Leo implied that the Biden administration demanded that social media companies removes or limit discussion of HB's laptop. This claim is false, as there was no Biden administration at the time. I hope that clears things up.

Whether people might still object to the decisions made by social media companies is a separate issue. But those decisions were not driven by State demands or requests.

@Visiting The requests to the social media companies came from the FBI, which is part of the government, the executive branch even, but there were multiple factions that were not all aligned.

Michael - If the requests came from the FBI, then presumably--at least hopefully--there was a law enforcement-related reason for them. Regardless, the requests did not come from the Biden administration. Which is my point.

I don't understand why anyone would imagine this app shouldn't have been accepted, and remain in the store. Your constitution clearly protects it, and there's no rule against it in Apple's own (nebulous) rules. So this was arbitrary, yes? Apple should have stood by its choice to accept the app, presumably on the basis that it protected a marginalised group of people from harm. But, of course, both wings of the US political establishment, and their apologists, would never accept that premise (the law, and all that) so of course you're not going to see Apple take a stand.

Regardless, the solution is simple: allow installation from outside the App Store. So long as Apple has an interest in protecting its margins at all costs, this is however unlikely to happen without regulatory pressure. Which is taking its strongest form from Europe, at the moment.

“ To take one less political example, the WHO was claiming for the first few years that COVID-19 wasn’t airborne, so using them as an official source would mean that the truth was misinformation.”

Your example tweet was from March 28th, 2020, 17 days after the NBA cancelled the 2020 season and everything else that came after. Not to mention the details they’re discussing in the tweet are nitpicking aside, relatively reasonably accurate. I expect better from you, Tsai but maybe you’re just as biased as some of the other goons you draw in (myself included, I guess).

@Ew It would have been understandable to be uncertain in March 2020, but the WHO tweet was completely unreasonable at the time because they stated as fact (even called it a “fact check”) something which they did not have good evidence for (contradicting other scientists and even their own director’s statement from February). Here’s Nature discussing how it took two years for the WHO to come around, though they they never deleted/corrected the tweet. I’m glad you have high expectations, but not sure what’s biased about pointing this out. The idea was not to pick on the WHO—lots of people got stuff wrong about COVID—but to give an example of why censorship of “misinformation” during a period of uncertainty is so problematic.

"can the government ever really advocate for something without there being an implied threat"

I think the government does that all the time.

"The whole idea of misinformation in an area where there’s a lot of uncertainty and evolving understanding doesn’t make sense."

There is a difference between knowing with a high degree of certainty that something is false, and not yet knowing what the truth is, so erring on the side of what currently seems the more advisable option. I agree that the WHO was wrong and dumb to present their position on masks as a fact, when it was at best a guess, and at worst, intentional misinformation meant to protect mask supply for people who most needed them.

However, as far as I know, nobody ever suggested that posts advocating for mask usage should be suppressed or removed as misinformation. So I would argue that the system worked, despite the WHO's mistake.

@Michael I remember all the permutations.

----

It’s not from China; it’s from China; it’s racist to say it’s from China.

It’s SARS-CoV-2; it’s COVID 19; it’s “the virus that causes COVID 19”.

It’s not airborne; it’s only in large droplets; it’s airborne and stays in mists in the air for a while.

It came from bats; it didn’t come from bats.

It came from the market; it might have come from a lab; it’s racist to say it might have come from a lab.

Masks are not helpful; masks are helpful; if you don’t put masks, you are killing the old; put masks even if you are alone in nature alone in your car.

It might live on surfaces, let packages rest for a day on the balcony; there is no need to let packages rest.

People close together shouting is very dangerous and can lead to mass infection (when white supremacists do it); widespread protesting is essential and won't spread the virus (when black lives matter does it).

Gyms should be closed as they lead to mass infection events; gyms are “essential” and should be kept open.

Close schools; open schools; close schools; open schools; close schools; open schools, close schools; open schools.

Vaccines are important; vaccines are the spawn of the devil.

We need 70% for herd immunity; we need 85% for herd immunity; we need 95% for herd immunity.

You can't catch COVID 19 twice; you can be infected with SARS CoV 2 twice but the second time is mild; you can catch COVID multiple times, and each one can lead to long COVID.

Drink bleach; it’s dangerous to drink bleach.

Ivermectin is effective at treating COVID; Joe Rogan is taking horse dewormer Ivermectin; Big Pharma doesn’t want you to know about Ivermectin.

Vaccines are better than natural immunity; vaccines are worse than natural immunity.

Vaccines are totally safe; vaccines might have health risks; vaccines have health risks but risks are lower than if you catch the virus and certainly if you have long COVID.

Vaccines are 100 effective against SARS CoV 2; vaccines lower transmission of SARS CoV 2, you can be infected, but vaccines will keep you from developing the disease; vaccinated still at risk for long COVID.

Vaccines will create herd immunity; we need yearly vaccination boosters to keep antibody response high enough.

----

I know scientific understanding evolves over time. My issue isn’t with that, but with statements made in bad faith (“masks are not effective” so that people don’t buy them), political virtue signaling with no basis in science (“black lives matter protests won’t help spread the virus; racism is a public health issue too”), and the worst, calling anything that doesn’t agree with the current (or non-existing) understanding as “misinformation” and demanding social media platforms to “do the responsible thing” and remove such posts.

I have some quibbles with @Plume @Léo’s responses, and I expect others do as well, but I don’t think this site needs a long discussion about the details of COVID. Let’s try to stay focused on the original topic.

> I don't understand why anyone would imagine this app shouldn't have been accepted, and remain in the store. Your constitution clearly protects it, and there's no rule against it in Apple's own (nebulous) rules. So this was arbitrary, yes? Apple should have stood by its choice to accept the app, presumably on the basis that it protected a marginalised group of people from harm. But, of course, both wings of the US political establishment, and their apologists, would never accept that premise (the law, and all that) so of course you're not going to see Apple take a stand.

@Sebby Has the constitution or Apple's rules ever been sufficient reasons to keep an app in the App Store? Apple has a long history of rejecting apps just because they feel like it. If you're being too creative, if you're using the API in a way that wasn't "intended" they'll just tell you no even if there isn't a written rule saying so. Years ago Apple prevented me from adding an iCloud container to one of my apps so I had to take that feature out. There was nothing in the App Store rules to suggest that I shouldn't be allowed to have an iCloud container but they decided I couldn't have it.

I think whether or not this app protects marginalized people is debatable. The goal of the app was essentially to help people evade the law but even accepting your premise three detainees got killed in the crossfire (assuming the shooter used this app or another app like it to find their location). I'm sure those detainees (and their families) would have preferred deportation.

FWIW I think people should be able to install the software they want on their own computers. However I don't agree or really understand why Apple would be expected to allow this in their store. And I think it was a mistake for them to even accept it in the first place. As MJTsai wrote the situation was totally foreseeable. Dildos are legal but you aren't going to find them on display in Macy's window.

All these issues come back to Apple because they refuse to allow sideloading. But even sideloading wouldn't have saved ICEBlock. The developer has stated he doesn't want to be responsible with maintaining a database of user accounts or any personally identifiable information. Apple almost certainly would not allow ICEBlock to now use their push notification infrastructure outside the App Store. Kicking ICEBlock out of the App Store but then allowing it to use its servers to facilitate its core functionality wouldn't solve any of Apple's PR problems.

Doesn't seem that there actually was crossfire. Seems like the bullets were just coming from the sniper and then he killed himself

@ObjC Since everyone is still signed with Apple certificates, including with sideloading, Apple's push infrastructure is still functional. That's how enterprise deployment current works, and Apple doesn't even "notarize" IPAs. They can't really block that for any sideloading, as then they'd be taken to court to allow third-party push daemons to run on their devices. They are petty bunch, so wouldn't be surprised if they tried such a shenanigan, but it doesn't exist currently.

@Léo It's based on speculation but I'd imagine in a world where sideloading was permitted access to Apple services like push would require approval/special entitlement.

I just don't see how Apple taking the app off the App Store but still allowing it access to APNS would alleviate the public pressure.

@Michael

https://www.404media.co/apple-banned-an-app-that-simply-archived-videos-of-ice-abuses/

It looks like Apple is completely caving here.

@ObjC4Life If they gatekeep APNS in any way, they would be in legal trouble, I think. Push is such an essential feature in modern day computing, they just wouldn't be able to get away with it.

> https://www.404media.co/apple-banned-an-app-that-simply-archived-videos-of-ice-abuses/

> It looks like Apple is completely caving here.

Archive like Youtube-dl? They also banned Musi (which didn’t even archive) b/c Google asked them too which I apparently lost forever because the app got offloaded when I updated iOS and the App Store won’t let me redownload it

>Google asked them too

To- trigger happy on this tiny iPhone keyboard

@Objc4life No, clearly rules and the constitution don't matter. That doesn't mean we can't object to a "realist" framing of "Apple does whatever it wants", because that is what Apple are asking us to do. That's my point. I don't for a second think Apple actually care, only that they have no justification for doing what they did. Which, to my mind, they simply don't. And that's a mark on the wall when you're the exclusive distributor of apps on your platform.

I’m still not being political but gotta say Léo’s recounting of the back and forth, while glossing over a lot of detail, is essentially correct.

I don’t think it’s political to say that we should remember what really happened and not let history be overwritten, especially when we were all there. It wasn’t that long ago.

All of this just shows once again that free speech is a real pain in the ass but all sides really need to protect it because the alternative is far worse.